


Bond Energy

by yfere



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, This is not going to be canon compliant at all in like two seconds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 07:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18686713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yfere/pseuds/yfere
Summary: Yeza's adventures in a locked hotel room while the M9 are away.





	Bond Energy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwinVax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinVax/gifts).



> Warnings: References to and depictions of trauma related to torture/abuse (starvation, bindings, unsanitary conditions, and sleep deprivation). Based off of the author’s hideously anal conception of a timeline where Yeza was captured between 25-29 days, most of which was spent in transit.
> 
> I meant for this to be a longer oneshot, but getting time to write has been difficult this week. So this is going to have three chapters, and not be canon-compliant or even science-compliant AT ALL, because fuck that!

He was shut in a room again, but it was different this time. It _was_. He had a key this time, even if he was too afraid to use it. And—the bed was nicer. There were the animals named after food that they had left with him, the teleporting dog and the weasel who did not teleport and who had just now quit gnawing on his ear. Veth had left some knicknacks, and her alchemical supplies to keep him amused. And he had the food that Veth promised would be brought up. He would be able to eat. He _would_.

But he’d stuffed five rolls down his vest at breakfast time before they left, just to be safe. A roll per day and then some is enough to live on. Veth said three days, the cow man said four. But they could take longer. They could never come back at all. And then where would he be?

Maybe the blue girl—Jester—maybe she would cast her spell and talk to him. Maybe she wouldn’t. He didn’t quite know how long he’d spent in the cell, but he knew, he thought he knew some intervals were longer than others between when she’d speak to him.

How long had it been? Was he going to get food? Were they dead already, killed in the ghost place they said they were traveling through? Were there any clocks in this horrible country? Would someone find out he was all by himself and break down the door and take him back to the cell? Was he dreaming everything that had happened for the last few days—was this a last surge of fevered activity in his brain before he died, visions like that story with the little girl and the matchsticks? Or was this a new kind of magical interrogation, where they enter his head and move everything around to find out what they want to know? Would he be able to eat? Gods, would there really be food coming up? Surely it had been too long by now. He was hungry. It felt like he would never stop being hungry.

His hand twitched over one of the rolls in his pockets, but he stopped himself before bringing it out. Maybe he could wait longer—a little longer to see if they would bring up food.

Unless—he was _so_ hungry. He pulled it out of his pocket and ate it, so quickly it nearly choked him—the mass of half-chewed bread crawling slowly and painfully down his esophagus, burning through his chest. He wanted to eat more. Needed to. He had to wait. Maybe he could sleep, since he could do that now. Sleep helped with the hunger before, back when they let him do it.

He heard a faint hissing noise behind him, and turned around in alarm.

The dog was pissing on the floor.

Oh dear. Oh no.

Because that was a whole other problem, wasn’t it? A dog that couldn’t be let out, and for him—for him a communal toilet at the end of the hall, which meant having to leave _this_ room, and running into who knows how many creatures who wanted to kill him while he was all by himself once more, with only a couple of daggers for defense—that wasn’t an option. Couldn’t be.

The smell didn’t bother him—he was used to this by now. He hated being used to it. He hated that he knew what to do. He’d thought this was over, but…

But this time didn’t have to be like the last. He wasn’t tied up this time, wasn’t being made to soil his clothing night after night, until his trousers were stiff and scratchy and chafing with every movement. And this time there was the alchemy kit shining at him from the corner of the room, his own little beacon of hope. If they had to relieve themselves on the floor, they could perhaps at least…

He tore the sheets off of the mattress, and mopped up the dog, Nugget’s mess. “Now look here,” he tried to explain. “If you have to do this it would really be better to do it in the corner of the room, not the middle here.” He pointed his finger and was a little surprised to see Nugget look back in the direction he was pointing. Then the dog turned back to him, expression dopey as ever.

Well, he’d see if any of that stuck. He wasn’t an expert on animals, to be honest.

The weasel Sprinkle leapt from around his neck to burrow in the dirty sheets—that animal was seriously disgusting. Yeza had tried to eat something like it after he had been in the tunnels for a long while, he couldn’t say how long, but when the scraps of breads and ends of vegetables they tossed to him ceased to satisfy, when he started growing hazy, dizzy from the hunger. At one point while they rested a rat-like creature had skittered over his shin, but the ropes made his movements too awkward and he couldn’t capture it. Then he’d thought he might siphon some blood from the worms—

But those weren’t things to dwell on. He approached the alchemy kit, was relieved to find it pristine, in perfect condition. Of course it would be. Veth wouldn’t do anything different. There was salt and liquid enough for a good brine, though her bottles, being clear and meant for storing low grade acids, wouldn’t do the job for the light-sensitive chemical he wanted to make. In a pinch he would ordinarily apply some dyed wax shoe polish to the glass, but there was nothing like that here, and Veth didn’t seem to even wear shoes anymore, now that he thought about it.

There were those duds from the alchemists’ shop—the “rhino sex” potions, in brown, opaque containers. Too small really to be much good—wrapping the chemicals in blankets and putting them under the bed might be the safer bet for the volume he was making.

…If he had the proper reagents, he might be able to do something about those rhino sex potions, too.

“Did you know, some urines are said to be aphrodisiacs,” he said over his shoulder to Nugget, who was cheerfully chewing on his old, tattered vest. “If distilled from merfolk, or the fey…”

The chloralkali process in the diaphragm cell was going smoother than he anticipated. Even the power to drive the reaction wasn’t so difficult to muster as it might once have been, since Veth added to her kit an ingenious device derived from a shock lizard that was far too expensive for him to have ever afforded for his own little shop.

And doing this was much better, a routine that allowed him to sink into an entirely different set of memories. His workstation—Luke’s burbling racket from the other room—the occasional brush of Veth’s cool fingers on his hands, his arms, his waist. _Don’t want you to overheat, standing here all day_ she said once, placing a hand around the back of his neck and making him groan aloud.

It had been a while since he’d been able to think of that, without it hurting him. Now he felt—too many things.

The next step only required heat. He lit the fire at the foot of their bed, set up the liquid capture, and pulled out the little notebook the red-haired man bought for him while they were out shopping. _Maybe if you think of your feelings as an equation, they won’t be so hard for you to deal with,_ Veth told him once, a long time ago. She’d taken a scrap of paper from him and written **LOVE + HORNY** in large block letters. Then, grinning widely, she drew a long arrow that pointed to **SEX**.

He’d laughed. _This is how you’re propositioning me?_

Her grin grew wider. _I’m just saying, maybe it isn’t as complicated as you think it is. These things logically lead to each other, right?_

He frowned at her, tried to gather some courage. **LOVE + TIME—— >MARRIAGE**, he wrote. His hands were shaking so badly, the words were hardly legible.

She stuck out her tongue at him **\+ CONSUMMATION SEX** , she added.

_You mean you—_

_That was always the plan._

Well. It was still a useful exercise. Maybe it would give him an idea of what to do. Unable to help himself, he began eating his second roll.

 **RELIEF + WORRY** , he wrote. That should probably work like a neutralization reaction, he thought, except neither feeling was really lessening in the presence of the other. Luke was safe, and Veth was alive, but she looked so different, and he didn’t really properly understand her explanation of what had happened at all. And she seemed so _vibrant_ , so _herself_ , and then so unhappy, in turns. And she’d left him so quickly, all _chemistry’s great, but killing’s better_ , and he’d always been half-afraid that one of these days she’d learn enough about alchemy to not be interested or excited by it anymore, that she’d get bored and find something, someone better to—

 **\+ INSECURITY** , he wrote. If Veth was listening to him go on and on, that’s what she would say it was. Gods. **\+ HUNGRY** , he wrote, because he was. **\+ TIRED, + LONELY, + AFRAID.**

He took the beakers off of the heat. After some time to cool, he’d add it to solution, and then he’d have all the bleach he wanted to clean up their messes. He should probably save it for the last day to conserve resources. Assuming there would be food, and he could use mealtimes to figure out how much time had passed.

He curled up on the bed, hand knocking against the rhino sex potions on the stand as he reached for his water canteen. **\+ HORNY** , he admitted to himself, miserably. He had no idea what the arrow pointed to, what the products should be.

At some point he dozed, but he was roused by a knock on the door. “Dinner is in,” a scratchy voice said on the other side.

So there would be food. And this was the beginning of the first night. He’d just have to figure out a way to endure the rest.


End file.
